Persuading a Wishful Thinker
Theoretical Economics
2023-12-01 v5
Abstract
We study a persuasion problem in which a sender designs an information structure to induce a non-Bayesian receiver to take a particular action. The receiver, who is privately informed about his preferences, is a wishful thinker: he is systematically overoptimistic about the most favorable outcomes. We show that wishful thinking can lead to a qualitative shift in the structure of optimal persuasion compared to the Bayesian case, whenever the sender is uncertain about what the receiver perceives as the best-case outcome in his decision problem.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.13846,
title = {Persuading a Wishful Thinker},
author = {Victor Augias and Daniel M. A. Barreto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.13846},
year = {2023}
}